The Five Most Difficult Accomplishments in Sports
Well, the Triple Crown has come and gone again. Betting and random drinking aside, there wasn’t much to talk about, as relative long-shots Animal Kingdom, Shackleford, and Ruler on Ice won the three Triple Crown races this year. Not since Affirmed in 1978 has a horse won the Triple Crown of horse racing. We here at Where We Watch like fueling bar debates and discussions, so here is my take on the 5 most difficult accomplishments in sports (in no particular order).
1) .400 batting average
The very nature of the statistic shows how absurd baseball is. If you fail to do your job 60% of the time, you are considered an all-time great. Regardless, hitting major league pitching is one of the hardest things to do in sports, and almost no one can do it well. Ted Williams was the last to do it, hitting .406 in 1941 (a fact that old timers will never let die), and only George Brett in 1980 has come even close since. As young hitters are increasingly geared towards hitting home runs (chicks dig the long ball), I wonder whether high batting averages are a thing of the past. Still, it will be interesting to see how close hitters like Jose Bautista and Joe Mauer can get to the magic number.
2) NBA - 72 Regular Season Wins
This record, like many records, is one the media cannot get enough of. In fact, it is this high on the list solely because of idiotic analysts that seem to think that teams will become as good as the ‘95-‘96 Bulls overnight. In the words of the highly awesome ESPN iPhone cowboy, “Vaaaaaaaan Gundy”: http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/nba/news/story?id=5450211.
3) The Triple Crown of Horse Racing
In theory, this should be an easy accomplishment. After all, horses are not very likely to get distracted by Twitter, get into legal trouble, or even get nervous at the competition. All it should take to win is one outrageously-fast horse. In reality, the Triple Crown is hard mainly because of unpredictability and inconsistency; the horses run on three very different tracks, jockeys change horses due to injury or personal preference, and horses drop in and out because of scheduling conflicts. Most importantly, the “athletes” themselves do not think like humans. Do you think, after winning the first two legs, the horse really knows what is at stake in the Belmont? Not likely. As an aside, if you watch the video of the 1978 Belmont Stakes, do you think that maybe the Triple Crown would be more common if there were only 5 horses in every race?
4) NFL- Single-Season Rushing Yards
Titans running back Chris Johnson is arguably the most dynamic, exciting player to enter the league in several decades. However, even his 2008 season, in which he was good for a 50 yard run every game, was one hundred yards short of Eric Dickerson’s 1984 season. Like the afore-mentioned .400 batting average, this record is exceedingly difficult partly due to the evolution of the game itself. After years of rule changes and commercialization, the NFL has changed from a run-oriented league to a pass-oriented league. Perhaps more importantly, the notion of the every down “feature back” is dying a slow death. Whenever the richest people in America decide how best to divide their absurd amount of revenue, look to see whether Johnson, Adrian Peterson, or some other back can challenge Dickerson’s record.
5) Pitching a Perfect Game
Ok, this is the easiest thing to do of the 5 on this list. Nevertheless, there have only been 20 (well, 21 really) in 135 years of Major League Baseball. Seriously, just think about what a perfect game takes; a pitcher needs to have his best stuff AND keep total focus for 9 innings AND keep his pitch count down AND have no walks, the defense has to be perfect and even make a couple of good plays for the pitcher, the umpire has to have a pitcher-friendly strike zone, and the list goes on. However, no-hitters have gone way up in the past 2 years, and I would hazard to say that we might see another perfect game in the next couple of years.
As a quick footnote, I would like to make the distinction between difficult accomplishments, such as those listed above, and records that are unbreakable (like Joe Dimaggio’s hitting streak, Ty Cobb’s career wins record, and every record held by Jerry Rice). With that in mind, feel free to both use these accomplishments to start your own bar discussions and comment below to tell us what we missed.
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